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Low Level Panic 

13 Feb

This is such a good production that I was bitterly disappointed when I finally realised it wasn’t new work. (Before I go to a show I don’t read the press release or indeed any of the marketing; I simply check the date on the invitation, and if I can go, I go.)   

Clare McIntyre’s Low Level Panic premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1988, but coming out of KXT on Sunday evening I didn’t know that. What I did know was that I’d just seen an extraordinary piece of theatre.

Set in the bathroom of a share house, it presents three women in their early twenties. Suiting the setting, the focus is on body image and sexuality. But most excitingly, it’s about thoughts and their awkward relation to reality.

The play is so powerful, so poignant, because it captures perfectly the way young adults have to navigate, for the first time, the tension between their rich, burgeoning inner-lives and the frustrating, frightening outside world.

Sometimes this tension is expressed in the frustration that reality doesn’t match our sexual fantasies. But as Jo says, played with gleeful and totally relatable honesty by Charlotte De Wit, thank God no one knows your thoughts.

Sometimes this tension is expressed in the terrifying awareness that you have no influence over other people’s thoughts, and that it’s not only your thoughts but theirs that create the world in which you must live. This is explored brilliantly by Marigold Pazar in the role of Mary.

Sometimes this tension is expressed in the desire to control, and Megan Kennedy gives a hilarious performance as uptight Celia.

Director Maike Strichow achieves a wonderfully thrilling texture through the juxtaposition of performance styles, giving Kennedy permission to create a gloriously larger-than-life Celia and allowing Pazar and De Wit to present a simple, raw truthfulness.

I recognise these women. Considering the age of the play, you could say I grew up with them. But the fact that HER Productions has been drawn back to this play highlights its enormous and ongoing relevance.

McIntyre writes absolutely superb dialogue. And one of its splendours is that its fad-free. Too often contemporary plays about these type of issues slip into theoretical language, and I’ll be direct: I don’t think that sort of language belongs in theatre. Don’t just throw around theoretical terms like the male gaze or the patriarchy. Show me how they operate. Leave lazy abstract words to reviewers, and do what the artform does best: show Life as it’s actually lived. Show me the women who suffer, and show me their extraordinary vitality, for in these beating hearts, strong and true, we’re offered a vision of a better world and how it will come.  

And that’s what this magnificent production of this beautiful play does.

Paul Gilchrist

Low Level Panic by Clare McIntyre

At KXT on Broadway until 17 Feb

kingsxcrosstheatre.com

Image by Georgia Jane Griffiths

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Homos, or Everyone in America

12 Feb

I’d be terrified to direct this one. It runs 105 minutes straight through. It’s made up of an enormous number of rather short scenes. The majority of these scenes are played solely by the same two actors. The scenes are not in chronological order. They’re set in a small number of locations (which might appear to make things easier, but actually robs you of the opportunity for variety). And it being New York 2016, it’s all played in accent. Oh, and there’s sizable chunks of overlapping dialogue. It’s a director and performer’s nightmare.

Director Alex Kendall Robson and his cast are to be congratulated for making it work, creating an engaging evening of theatre.

Homos, or Everyone in America by Jordan Seavey presents the relationship between a “Writer” and an “Academic” over a handful of years. But by referencing events both from their childhood and before, and events contemporary to the writing of the play, their relationship evokes the gay male experience in America over the last fifty years.

Except for an absolutely show stealing scene in which Sonya Kerr creates both humour and pathos as a sale assistant at Lush, the play revolves entirely around the discussions between the two gay male lovers, and with their gay male single friend, Dan. Reuben Solomon as “The Writer” and Eddie O’Leary as “The Academic” are on stage for an extraordinary amount of time and they’re gloriously vibrant. With a performance that effectively suggests both the desire for inclusion and the awareness of exclusion, and as such is less vocally intense, Axel Berecry’s Dan gives the production a pleasing texture.

The lovers either flirt or bicker. You might think that a depressing image of romance. But is it actually possible to present the reality of romance on stage? Can romance, in itself, in its odd smallness, in its reduction of the wide world to one person, be the stuff of drama? We like to say Love is blind, but it’s actually just myopic. Romcoms employ humour because without the laughs, and the predictable beauty of the youthful characters, no one would be interested.

Perhaps we avoid a realistic portrayal of romance in theatre because, understandably, the audience thinks they already know enough about it. It is, after all, a rather garden variety human experience. When some Shakespearean character says nonsense like “The sun doth rule the heavens”, the rest of the cast don’t point flaming torches at the stage in the hope of suggesting something about the nature of sunshine. The audience knows what it is – and so the play gets on with its real business.

So what is actually happening when we purport to put romance on stage? What is the real business? Plays that represent gay romances tend to do so for two reasons.

Firstly, they remind us that they’re an everyday occurrence. And, yes, in a heteronormative society, that’s still desperately needed.

Secondly, they present the gay political experience. (Any decent play about heterosexual romance is also about politics. Name one well known play that’s actually about the romance itself, the personal experience of the lovers? To clarify, let me shift focus to another artform. All those nineteenth century novels ending with Dear Reader, I married him are bildungsromans, stories of young people growing up and either accepting their role in society or actively challenging it. They’re about politics.)

In this play, politics are particularly highlighted because that’s what the lovers bicker about. They fight about whether closet gays should be outed, about the gendering of language, about intersectionality and objectification, about the perpetuation of stereotypes, about homophobic violence, about the gay community. (What exactly is a community? There’s an entire play just in that. And like all good plays, it wouldn’t give an answer, only elucidate how complex is the issue.)

It’s a modern day cliché that the personal is the political, and the phrase’s popularity can be partly attributed to its nebulous nature, to the ambiguity of its terms. Many people use the phrase to express nothing more than their refusal to be alienated from sources of power: I will not be told that my actions are without influence. Other people use it to police the lives of those closest to them: You will behave this way because your actions have an impact you can’t see (though I can.)

Of course, the phrase the personal is the political could be simply read as what rhetorically it is: a paradox constructed from the juxtaposition of opposites. The personal is what we can do alone. The political is what we can do together. Viewed this way, every relationship belongs in the political sphere, and the much quoted phrase is, in effect, the denial of the very existence of the personal sphere.

This denial serves theatre well. As an artistic form, it’s never been particularly good at representing the personal sphere of life. That’s why it naturally privileges the presentation of individuals in their dealings with other individuals. It struggles to show us the inner world.

Perhaps that’s why Homos, or Everyone in America is fascinating. It’s very lack of ambition, its focus on a single romantic relationship, might be its strength. Theatre might glory in representing relationships, but what if romance is the most personal of relationships? Might we be getting somewhere new?

Or perhaps, as a cynic might say, romance is actually the least personal of relationships. It’s just blind biology that drives us together, rather indiscriminately, and the most positive thing we can say is that desire unconsciously creates one of the great glues that holds together …. community. Ah, that word again.

Homos, or Everyone in America is a beautiful acknowledgement of the experience of romance, and a teasing invitation to thought.

Paul Gilchrist

Homos, or Everyone in America by Jordan Seavey

At New Theatre until 9 March

newtheatre.org.au

Image by Chris Lundie

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Tiny Beautiful Things

6 Feb

This wonderful piece brims with wisdom. There are deeply moving exhortations to forgiveness, acceptance, love and personal empowerment. (I’m uncomfortable with the last member of that list; I’ll get back to it.)

Tiny Beautiful Things is an adaption by Nia Vardalos of a book by Cheryl Strayed. Strayed wrote an advice column, anonymously fielding questions from those who anonymously asked them.

The piece attempts no standard narrative. It simply consists of three actors (Stephen Geronimos, Nic Prior and Angela Nica Sullen) presenting the letters sent to the column and Strayed (Mandy McElhinney) giving her answers. She does this as she tidies her house late at night.

This tidying of the house is a beautiful touch; having problems and seeking solutions is not some sort of aberration – it’s the very stuff of everyday Life.  There’s no need to go to the mountain top for enlightenment. Tiny beautiful things are all around us. As the Zen koan says: Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

Director Lee Lewis elicits magnificent performances from the cast. Playing multiple characters, Geronimos, Prior and Nica Sullen capture brilliantly the bewilderment of uncertainty, the agony of its opposite, and the delight of being heard. McElhinney plays Strayed with an absolutely charming combination of good sense and humour, vulnerability and strength.

As her pseudonym, Sugar, Strayed fields questions about friendship, marriage, sex, grief…. anything and everything, and answers them with heartwarming anecdotes and electrifying figurative language. She claims no expertise, except what she’s learnt from her own mistakes and from the love of her mother.

Here’s an abbreviated example of the sort of thing we get (but I emphasise, this one I made up myself):

Dear Sugar, I’ve been happily married to a wonderful man for ten years but now etc …. Signed Confused.

Dear Confused, It’s no wonder you’re confused. It’s easy for us to imagine that things will stay as they have been, especially when they’ve been so good. When I was first married etc… Signed Sugar.

This question/answer structure may not seem like the material of theatre, but I was utterly mesmerised for the entire 95 minutes.

And, of course, despite its oddness, its uniqueness, Tiny Beautiful Things does what all good theatre does. Theatre artists always present a vision of Life, and we as the audience are in the business of deciding if that vision can help us in some way. Perhaps the show is simply good fun, and so it reminds us we can let go of the worries of the day. Perhaps the show represents an aspect of our experience we feel has been previously unacknowledged, and so it reminds us we’re not alone. Perhaps the show models behaviour to which we aspire, and so we leave the theatre determined to be more kind or more courageous. Regardless of the vision of Life offered, we respond to it as a type of advice.

Let me come back to personal empowerment, that term I stumbled over initially. Strayed never uses the term. (Perhaps, like me, she feels it has an unpleasant odour, something suggestive of real estate agents beating their chests as they gee themselves up for the next big sale.) But both Strayed and the play explore something important here.

It’s worth noting that Tiny Beautiful Things never shows us whether the advice Strayed offers is any good. She’s clearly loved by her readers, but we don’t know if any individual who asks for advice ever acts on it, or if they do, whether it makes any positive impact on their lives. It’s we, the audience, who must judge if what Strayed says is of any value.

It’s a funny phenomenon, advice. In Australia, it’s unfashionable. These days, if we’re bothered at all, we’re more likely to tell someone exactly what they should do, rather than offer them a suggestion. But this show, this beautiful thing, reminds us that it’s always a suggestion, that it’s you as an individual who always has agency. It is you who chooses to ask for advice, you who chooses to see its value, you who chooses to act on it, or not. You. And that’s a good thing.    

Asking for advice is not a relinquishing of responsibility, and giving advice is not a form of coercion. The giving and taking of advice is an acceptance that all of us are neck deep in this mysterious muddle called Life.

This show is a gloriously humane reminder, that faced with Life’s challenges, no one has the answers, but we do have each other. And one thing we do for each other – in conversation, in theatre – is make real the magic of choice.  

Paul Gilchrist

Tiny Beautiful Things by Nia Vardalos (adapted from a book by Cheryl Strayed, co-conceived by Marshall Heyman, Thomas Kail and Nia Vardalos)

At Belvoir until 2 March

belvoir.com.au

Image by Brett Boardman

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Mad for You

4 Feb

Old age is not for sissies. This crack, with its whip sting, is usually attributed to Bette Davis.

Whatever the case, ageing ain’t going to be easy. And, in our secular world, ageing is an illness from which no one recovers.

Mad for You, written and directed by David Allen, presents the challenges faced by an ageing Janet (Alice Livingstone) as she loses her mental abilities. It also presents the challenges experienced by her family. Her husband, Brian (Andrew James) has promised to never put Janet in care, but her daughter (Emma Louise) sees little other option.

For the most part, Allen employs an almost TV style realism, but this realism is textured by flashbacks to better times, when Janet had all her faculties, and by brief scenes in which we witness her delusion that she’s still a working performer. Janet’s former career facilitates references to famous dramatic characters who’ve suffered madness, like Lear and Ophelia. (There’s also an odd scene in which Brian breaks the fourth wall and unfavourably compares Australia’s aged health care system to that of Holland or Denmark, I don’t remember which.)

In some ways, Allen presents us a scenario, rather than a story. Janet’s dilemma can have no satisfying solution. All roads ultimately lead to the same destination. Yes, the choice of route is debated, but the play doesn’t take us far down either dismal track.

Instead, we get a deeply moving portrait of suffering. Livingstone gives an extraordinary performance, powerfully juxtaposing the terror and bewilderment of dementia with poignant reminders of the vivacious, intelligent woman Janet once was. It’s the storm’s dark chaos, made all the more terrible by being broken by the fitful lucidity of lightning.

It’s great to see new Australian work in a wonderful little venue like this.

Paul Gilchrist

Mad for You by David Allen

Produced by ADHOC Theatre

at Sydney Acting Studio to 11 Feb

www.sydneyactingstudio.com/in-production

Image by Nick Walker

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Alone it Stands

1 Feb

Claim a sportsperson has made History and you’re probably hoping to forget the horrors of which History usually consists.

In 1978, the Irish provincial team of Munster played the touring All Blacks. For many people, it’s a game to forever remember.   

For those ignorant of rugby, this might seem a little odd. But to appreciate this as a mouse-that-roared story you need to be aware, that on football pitches around the globe and for some time, little New Zealand had themselves been displaying decidedly un-rodentlike behaviour.     

You might also think it sounds a little sentimental. And when one of the characters lists by name each of the Munster men who played on that famous day, I couldn’t help recollect Yeats’ roll call in “Easter, 1916” – though the events that poet memorialises are far more terrible.

Perhaps Alone it Stands is a slight story. Perhaps.

It’s certainly a terrific evening’s entertainment. Under the expert and endlessly inventive direction of Janine Watson, we’re treated to absolutely brilliant comic performances.

All six cast members play both Irish and Kiwi characters, and one of the piece’s many charms is the juxtaposition of accents. The skill with which this is presented is a tribute to dialect coach Linda Nicholls-Gidley.

The physical performances are also marvellous, and credit should go to the actors and Watson, but also to the support team of fight director Tim Dashwood and intimacy coordinator Chloë Dallimore.

The program suggests the cast play sixty roles in all. To give a taste of this amazing feast of physicality, let me pick out a few faves.

Alex King as All Black Stu Wilson magnificently embodies the extraordinary confidence and agility of a world class athlete, and she also displays true comic genius as Sinbad (and, no, Wikipedia won’t reveal who that is. Go see yourself!) Tristan Black as the Kiwi manager hilariously encapsulates the absurdly confrontational hypermasculinity of the middle-aged sporting official. Briallen Clarke is glorious in the range suggested by the portrayals of a tense expectant mother to that of perfectly assured All Black Gary Knight. Skyler Ellis presents a beautiful contrast with his suave BBC commentator and his bewildered everyman Munster fan.  Anthony Taufa’s sheepish soon-to-be father, struggling to balance new responsibilities with his passion for the game, is wonderful, as is Ray Chong Nee’s young mischief-making urchin, a boy with more on his mind than football.

And these last examples hint at the glory of the piece. Yes, it’s about a football game. And, yes, a dramatist inventing the whole thing from scratch would most likely have chosen a different scoreline.

But, apart from providing an opportunity for talented comedians to show off their stuff, what playwright John Breen does so well is to create a truly Bruegelesque world.

Auden wrote in his famous commentary on Bruegel “About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood….”

It’s this Master status that Breen achieves, not by what he says about suffering, but by what he says about joy. It need not be grand or otherworldly. Rather it hides, amongst all the business of Life, waiting in surprise.  

Paul Gilchrist

Alone it Stands by John Breen

at Ensemble until 2 March

ensemble.com.au

Image by Prudence Upton

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Sophia = (Wisdom): The Cliffs

25 Jan

Not to be told what to think … how wonderfully refreshing!

It’s pure relief to see a play that doesn’t have a blatant message. It’s a burst of cool, clean air – one which the Sydney theatre scene badly needs. All too often our audiences are offered productions in which the artists have something to say, and boy are you going to hear that something good and hard.

I’m not such a nihilist that I object to a message per se. It’s just that the message is often either painfully obvious, bereft of any complexity, or simply utterly lacking originality. You don’t need to go to the theatre for this sort of thing; you could go to your local church. The performance there has every chance of being more entertaining. And, honestly, the message might be richer. And I guarantee you’ll need to throw far less into the collection plate.

Artists, if you can say it in a slogan, maybe you don’t need a story. You certainly don’t need the dramatic form, whose particular magic is multiplicity. Yes, I’m being harsh, but we really must re-explore theatre’s potential. All justice and no joy makes theatre a deathly dull and dangerous toy.

Directed by Patrick Kennedy, Richard Foreman’s Sophia = (Wisdom): The Cliffs is a wondrous gift of a piece. It playfully invites us to think: about wisdom, about theatre, about being an audience. Or perhaps it’s more tongue in cheek than that. Perhaps it’s allowing us to not think at all.

Light on both narrative and characterisation, it’s constructed from a deliciously beautiful use of space (some of the most brilliant I’ve ever seen), a glorious use of colour and costume, and an extraordinarily eclectic and evocative soundscape. All design is by Kennedy and it’s a magnificent achievement. Foreman has created a marvellously mischievous meta-theatrical template and Kennedy makes the most of its wild potential.

The cast do terrific work, inhabiting a performative world in which flat realism is almost entirely replaced by near mechanically-precise movement and vocal work. This joyfully jolts us from any risk of deadening complacency, reminding us we’re not passive witnesses and that what occurs on the far side of the fourth wall can’t (in itself alone) be Life.

And, every now and then, the lights dim and the house lights come up. We become witnesses to ourselves, and we might recall, that despite all the fabulous work on stage, it’s our response that’s crucial. We’re not mere recipients of a message. We’re co-creators of the magic.

And what magic it is!

Paul Gilchrist

Sophia = (Wisdom): The Cliffs by Richard Foreman

Produced by Patrick Kennedy Phenomenological Theatre

At New Theatre until 27 Jan

newtheatre.org.au/sophiawisdom-the-cliffs/

Image by Daniel Boud

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The Strong Charmion

20 Jan

This is a thrilling piece of theatre.

I have to admit, I love a historical drama. Much of the focus in contemporary theatre is on sharing our stories and giving voice to particular communities, phraseology that creates the impression that theatre is merely a type of reportage.

But historical drama is clearly not reportage: the artists creating any drama that is set in a distant historical period were simply not there! No matter how much research has been done, we know the artists are making things up, are being thrown back onto fiction, and that’s a delightful thing. Fiction can be a glorious invitation to the audience to engage, to enjoy, to flourish, rather than merely be informed. (I’m aware I’m giving little weight to the fact that theatre that shares our stories or gives voice might be offering representations of particular lives to people who have never before seen their lives represented on stage. Of course theatre can do this, and I hope it continues to do so. But it’s not all theatre does, or all it might do.)      

The Strong Charmion by Chloe Lethlean Higson is set in a circus in the 1920’s. Circuses traditionally present the unconventional. They are the orient of normalcy, defining what is expected, and acceptable, by displaying what is not. They operate both as freak show and as pressure valve; they offer both the titillation of the bizarre and relief from the banal. Lethlean Higson has chosen the perfect setting for her exploration of both repressive social mores and the intoxicating potential for growth. Bella Saltearn’s set and Catherine Mai’s lighting design are wonderfully evocative of the shadows and squalor from which new visions of life ultimately burst forth to find the light.    

Rosalie Whitewood (Gabrielle Bowen) is The Strong Charmion, a woman of unconventional strength. She refuses to be small, she refuses to be physically vulnerable. She is one of several characters who challenge traditional visions of femininity. Her family and friends (Emily Crow, Niky Markovic and Alyssa Peters) question chastity, marriage and reductive visions of gender. Their tales are told with both humour and poignancy.

In this, its first showing, the production suffers from a few issues. On opening night, gremlins played havoc with the tech, making changeovers between scenes awkward and slow – but these demons will no doubt be exorcised as the run continues. (These tech gremlins were probably also why it took me so long to appreciate that some of the scenes were flashbacks. Or at least I’m blaming them; it might be just that I’m stupid.) The script could do with a little fleshing out; these characters are fascinating – and I’d love them to say more. I also wonder whether the piece is served by the doubling that means the male experience is not granted a fullness approximating that of the female and non-binary characters; if we better comprehend the battle, more sweetly we savour the victory.

There’s an absolutely terrific story here and I hope it gets the chance to grow further.

Lethlean Higson was the recipient of the 2023 Katie Lees Fellowship, and once again this brilliant initiative by Flight Path Theatre has added something of value to the Sydney theatre scene.  

Paul Gilchrist

The Strong Charmion by Chloe Lethlean Higson

Flight Path Theatre until Jan 27

flightpaththeatre.org

Image by Clare Hawley

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Tiddas

18 Jan

This play continues Belvoir’s magnificent commitment to indigenous theatre.

It’s an adaptation of Anita Heiss’ novel by the writer herself, directed by Nadine McDonald-Dowd and Roxanne McDonald.

Six women meet regularly as members of a book club and we witness their changing relationships as each faces their own individual problems.

This is, of course, not new territory. However, presented from an indigenous perspective, it’s fascinating.

Yes, there are several challenges involved in using this type of plot in theatre. One is that the positing of five (or is it six?) protagonists makes it difficult to give sufficient time to each individual story. Secondly, by setting many of the scenes in the actual club meetings – an exclusively female space – the main problem each woman appears to face is her relationship with other women. And to achieve dramatic tension, these women bicker and fight. In a tale which aims (I think) to ultimately valorise sisterhood, that tension is disconcerting.

But is it a truthful representation? I wouldn’t know.

And that raises the issue of theatre that purports to tell our stories. As an outsider, am I to take all this as reportage?

I suggested initially that the following of the standard tropes of a sisterhood story was made more intriguing by its indigenous perspective. How?

Firstly, all the books discussed by the club are written by indigenous writers (once again, I think). We’re spared lengthy discussions of texts we may not be familiar with, but it’s curious that what the characters often value about the chosen books is their focus on what might be called political issues. Valuing a novel for its content or theme is not what is usually done. A book about, say, native title might be well written or it might be poorly written. Consider the enormous range in quality of novels about, say, love. When an artwork is valued primarily for its content or theme it suggests either a lack of sophistication on the part of the reader, or a glorious relief that finally a deep silence is being broken. (It’s worth noting that the much esteemed Jane Austen wrote six novels about love – which is six more than she wrote about native title.)

Continuing to addressing the deep silences in our nation’s literature, the characters suggest that the great Australian novel would need to include indigenous characters and to have a “message.” The first of these requirement is obvious, but the second is highly debatable. Heiss’ Tiddas is playfully asking us to think about fiction (I’m deliberately avoiding the phrase our stories.)

In a gorgeously provocative twist, though the novels the club reads are often valued for their focus on indigenous political issues, most (though not all) of the issues Heiss’ characters face are more universal; sexual relations, procreation, and friendship. (I’ll point out a fascinating blurring of this: one character uses the word “sovereignty” to describe the experience of personal autonomy or individual independence. It will be interesting to see, over the next few years, the changing usage of this oddly legalistic word.)  

If I take Tiddas as reportage, I should also point out that a fundamental aspect of the characters’ experience is an intense awareness and assertion of distinctions: Blak as against white, Aboriginal as against Torres Strait Islander, Koori as against Murri, woman as against man. Definition by opposition can feel empowering. And the characters’ emphasis on nomenclature (which word or phrase is the correct or acceptable one) expresses both a desire to be accurately represented and a desire for power. Considering this nation’s appalling colonial history, both desires are utterly understandable. (That knowledge is readily aligned with power is highlighted in a scene in which the sole white character apologises for her terrible behaviour, saying “There is so much I need to learn.” Learn? Is ignorance really her fault? Though it seems counter-intuitive, to emphasise her moral culpability would be to further underline her power. Ascribing ignorance to her weakens her, particularly when what counts as knowledge is beyond her remit.)   

The cast – Louise Brehmer, Lara Croydon, Jade Lomas-Ronan, Roxanne McDonald, Anna McMahon, Perry Mooney and Sean Dow (playing all the male roles) – are very watchable, and warmly invite us to share their characters’ frustrations and joys.  

I’ll finish by describing a golden moment in the performance. It’s understated and unobtrusive. The spoiler rule prevents me giving much detail, but it’s a piece of stage business involving two glasses of alcohol and which of two characters is drinking what. It’s a delightful subversion of stereotypes, and a wonderful example of the dramatic form’s ability – through its juxtaposition of voice with voice, and words with actions – to remind us that the world will refuse to fit our theories (our stories?) and will constantly challenge us to growth.   

Paul Gilchrist

Tiddas by Anita Heiss

At upstairs Belvoir (as part of the Sydney Festival) until Jan 28

belvoir.com.au/productions/tiddas/  

Image by Stephen Wilson Barker

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Terminus

18 Dec

Mark O’Rowe’s play was first produced in Dublin in 2007.

It’s a three hander, constructed from interconnected monologues.

O’Rowe tells a damn good story. Set in modern Dublin, it’s laced with sex, violence and an unconventional theology. It’s both very funny and thought provoking.

O’Rowe employs what’s been described as poetic prose. This particular jury of one is still out in regard to its effectiveness. There are certainly passages of remarkable beauty, a glorious speech in which a young woman reflects on key moments in her life being one. But the use of rhyme, so effective in creating humour, perhaps is less so in representing reality. It depends on your metaphysics, your vision of the nature of Truth, or indeed if you think Truth has any particular nature at all (and is therefore deserving of that capital ‘T’). Despite offering a portrait of a very gritty, wild, dangerous city, the tight connections between the three storylines, the presence of an eschatology (unconventional or not) and, yes, the frequent rhyme, all suggest a world in which there is most definitely an ultimate order…. and that’s a vision of life that’s increasingly less common. (I will note, however, that O’Rowe’s three storylines are hardly of the common garden variety, and so to suggest the play asserts some sort of ultimate Truth might be missing the point – and I’ve reviewed theatre long enough to know that’s a common garden variety occupational hazard.)

This production, directed by Katherine Hopwood Poulsen, is a splendid 115 minutes of theatre. Presented in the basement of the Marrickville Town Hall, the aesthetic is appropriately minimalist, allowing the script and the performances to shine. Tabrett Bethell plays a woman attempting to save another from what she believes is a forced backyard abortion. Bethell has a powerful stage presence that effectively stands in pathos-inducing contrast to the character’s deep fragility. Andrea Tan plays a woman who, in a moment of fatal danger, is aided by the most surprising of heroes. It’s in this storyline that the play is at its most fantastical, and the gorgeous strength of Tan’s performance is that we’re fascinated to see where all this unlikeliness might lead. Johnny Cordukes plays an unexpected serial killer (though I’m not sure I’ve met enough of the type to be certain about the first of those adjectives.) Cordukes nails the macabre humour and, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, keeps us thoroughly engaged in the darkest parts of the tale.

Terminus was my final show for 2023 and, after a wonderful ride through a year of theatre, it was a terrific place for that journey to end.

Paul Gilchrist

Terminus by Mark O’Rowe

Marrickville Town Hall Basement until 16 Dec

www.terminusplay.com.au

Image supplied

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The Wind in the Willows

14 Dec

(In which my desire to appear erudite is apparent in the pretentious surfeit of quotes from other texts.)

Kenneth Grahame’s novel was published in 1908; it’s a perfect piece of Edwardian charm.

This is the literary world in which Rupert Brooke could dream of death on the Western Front in these words:

“If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

that is for ever England.”

Brooke also imagined that, in the afterlife, his soul would give back to the Divine

“the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.”

In this gush of misty positivity, Brooke omits any description of his mangled, war-broken corpse.  

(In all fairness, this oddly parochial era did also produce Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.)

Alan Bennett’s very clever theatrical adaptation of The Wind in the Willows was first performed in 1990 at the National Theatre. Bennett sticks to the key elements of the story, but he loses Grahame’s absolutely delightful narrative voice. Here’s a sample of how such prose might leave an honest dramatist to weep in envy:

“He (the Mole) thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before—this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver—glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”

But Bennett’s dramatic treatment does allow him to add even more jokes, and the postcolonial context encourages him to makes more explicit the very English nature of the tale, and to gently mock it.

Bennett also gives a clearer narrative arc. The original novel is episodic, but Bennett introduces the villains (the weasels, stoats, foxes and ferrets) early on, in preparation for the final showdown with the heroes (a mole, a water rat, a badger and a toad.) 

To any audience, familiar with the book or not, this anthropomorphism is its most distinctive feature. The characters are animals of the English countryside, but they speak (English, obviously) and live very English middleclass lives – ones filled with picnics, motoring and recreational boating. Is the suggestion that there’s something unquestionably natural about this way of life?

Grahame’s idyll was certainly a curious tale to tell at a time when England’s empire covered more than half the planet. Perhaps it was an elegy for lost innocence. Perhaps it was a smoke screen. (Though Tolkien’s diminutive hobbits – with their burrows, their penchant for comfort, their unexpected resilience, their fierce loyalty – are surely direct descendants of Grahame’s heroes. And despite Tolkien’s proclaimed dislike of allegory, this English myth of the courage of the little people came into its own in 1940.)

Whatever the case, Grahame’s story has undeniable charm, and has long been a favourite of children’s literature, a tale that speaks to both little ones and their elders.

Directed by James Raggatt, this production brims with magic. A bare stage is filled with exuberant performances. Michael Doris is terrific as Toad, presenting a character who is gloriously self-centred, eyes ever open to a world of adventure, and heart closed to anyone but himself. Lachlan Stevenson as the serious and sensible Badger has a commanding stage presence and offers a splendidly rich vocal performance. Miranda Daughtry as the weasel gives a perfectly hilarious portrait of the small time crime boss. Ross Walker plays Albert the horse wonderfully, poignantly expressing the patient resentment domesticated animals surely must feel towards their supposed owners. (The role is a superb invention of Bennett’s. He gives the horse a name and voice, and by giving him a burgeoning political consciousness, mischievously prompts us – as we watch a play soaked in anthropomorphism – to closely consider the nature of our relationship with our animal cousins.)        

The use of the space is magnificent, especially as the cast, hooded like puppeteers, effectively create cars, trains and boats, all from very simple props.

Occasionally the pace falters. Perhaps a more vigorous soundscape might have helped (and that’s from someone who usually finds them superfluous at best, and cheating at worst.)

And in case you’re uncertain about spending an(other) evening with a pack of adults in animal onesies, rest assured the costuming by Isabella Holder is beautifully simple and gently evocative.  

A playful paean to friendship and pleasure, this is a fun show.

Paul Gilchrist

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (adapted for the stage by Alan Bennett)

at KXT on Broadway until 23 December

www.kingsxtheatre.com/

Image supplied by Stacks On Theatre

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